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Willy Hall in front of the Sydney Opera House (Photo credit: ABC Australia)

The son of the late architect Peter Hall has passionately defended his father who was maligned for years after completing the design of the Sydney Opera House.

In a rare interview, Willy Hall told the TV current affairs program Australian Story, “My father was portrayed as a strike breaker and a mediocre architect who took on a job he shouldn’t have taken. There were times when he found it unbearable.”

Peter Hall was 34 when his firm took over the Sydney Opera House project after the original architect, the Dane Jørn Utzon, quit in 1966 after bitter arguments with the New South Wales government over cost and schedule issues. Hall completely redesigned the building’s interiors, turning the main hall into a single purpose concert hall and shifting opera to a smaller space that had been intended for drama. He also resolved the problem of how to build the glass walls on the north side, an issue that Utzon and his team had struggled with.

The Sydney Opera House officially opened in 1973 but for much of his career Hall was ostracised by many in the architectural community and he went into a personal and professional decline, culminating in his death in 1995, aged 64.

Peter Hall (Photo credit: ABC Australia)

Hall’s life and career are chronicled in Australian Story: Phantom of the Opera House, which screens on Australia’s ABC on February 1 at 8 pm. “Utzon did a beautiful job of designing the concept, but unfortunately he wasn’t able to finish it. A very worthy team of talented Australians was able to finish it, and the history needs to be put right,” Willy Hall told the program. Hall, who unearthed hundreds of his father’s personal diaries, letters and photographs, asked, “Why was my father treated so badly? And why did he die a destitute, broken man?”

Typifying the anti-Hall sentiment which persists to this day, Sydney-based architectural historian and critic Philip Drew said, “Hall was the man who buggered up the Opera House.”